Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: ‘It’s very easy to trade in simplistic stereotypes'

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie writes sentences so powerful that her TED Talk was sampled by Beyoncé.

In Dream Count (her first novel in 13 years), she dives into the complex relationship between African Americans and 'Non-American Blacks' like herself.

“I would love a much more profound connection between the two communities and I think one of the ways to get to that is to have more honest conversations and also more information."

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Writing and reading fiction gives us an opportunity to "become alive in bodies that are not our own," Ngozi Adichie tells Saturday Morning.

"It's always been for me, just very deeply satisfying to imagine lives that are very unlike mine and to imagine them in a very intimate and deep way.

"I'm very alert to the world, and I'm very interested in people. and I'm always watching and I'm always taking notes."

While novels are a very helpful way to bring up subjects that can be difficult to talk about, she says, to make them realistic, you need to be willing to go into uncomfortable territory.

Ngozi Adichie, who lives between the States and Nigeria, does just this inDream Count - the story of three Nigerian women in their 40s whose lives haven't quite gone to plan.

The novel touches on the fact that Black people who move to the US often find themselves buying into stereotypical ideas about African Americans, Ngozi Adichie says.

On the other hand, Black Americans who've experienced "deeply unjust" treatment from the system have absorbed negative stereotypes about the African continent.

“There are many African Americans for whom the word ‘African’ was used as an insult… if you were going to be insulted, you were told that you look like an African.”

“Very often, people don't know enough about these subjects, and it's very easy to then trade in very simplistic stereotypes.”

Slavery has existed throughout human history, including in many African countries, Ngozi Adichie says, but in the United States, the consequences of it are still very much alive today.

“A person who was a slave in Igboland 100 years ago would not be able to tell today because often they've been absorbed into the families that originally enslaved them - that's not the case in America.

“It’s very clear from studies that African Americans - the people whose descendants were enslaved in this country - are still bearing the consequences of slavery.”

While there is often tension between Black Americans and Black people who are not American, there are also "wonderful connections" between the two cultures, says Ngozi Adichie, who first moved to the States at 19.

“There's a long history of African countries that were deeply supportive of the civil rights movement, for example, and also a long history of African American writers and artists who found in African countries a deep well of inspiration.”

Under President Trump's new regime, life in the United States is changing in a way that is "rapid and confusing and shocking", Ngozi Adichie says. She knows people in Africa who are afraid to fly into the country and also African-born people in the US who are afraid of the consequences of flying out.

While those fears seem justified, a high degree of superstition is melded into the Nigerian version of Christianity, Ngozi Adichie says.

She recalls an aunt once praying intensely after a bat flew into her window because she was convinced it meant something bad was about to happen.

“I remember thinking that poor bat was confused, right, and just hit the window.”

To Ngozi Adichie, such superstitions are moving to observe because they seem to come from our attempts to make sense of a mysterious world.

“There's something quite beautiful and humble about acknowledging that there's so much we do not know.”

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's books Purple Hibiscus and The Danger of a Single Story feature in the proposed Year 13 English curriculum for 2025.